Albemarle County
Lieutenant Governor Gooch served under the Earl of Orkney (George Hamilton) and then under the Earl of Albemarle (William Anne Keppel). The Earl of Albemarle was honored by having a county named after him in 1744.
A German officer brought to Charlottesville in 1779, one on the Saratoga Convention prisoners, noted that in Albemarle County:1
- All the houses are therefore quite a distance apart, which gives the country an appearance of wilderness. Besides, everybody wants to have his house situated on a hill to get the breeze in summer. This removes the houses from the main road to such an extent that they are not visible from the road and if you want to find a certain house, you have to trust to luck while following one of the narrow footpaths which cross the woods...
- ...Near the house of the owner are the abodes for the slaves. Only few negroes live together in these miserable little sheds, because they are very quarrelsome as a rule.
A British officer had a consistent description of the settlement pattern:2
- ...the face of the country appears an immense forest, interspersed with various plantations, four or five miles distant from each other; on these there is a dwelling-house in the center, with kitchens, smoke-house, and out-houses detached, and from the various buildings, each plantation has the appearance of a small village, at some little distance from the houses, are peach and apple orchards, &c. and scattered over the plantations are the negroes huts and tobacco-houses, which are large built of wood...
in 1755, Peter Jefferson and Joshua Fry showed their homes - but not the community at Charlottesville - on their map of Virginia
Source: Library of Congress, A map of the most inhabited part of Virginia containing the whole province of Maryland with part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina (by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, 1755)
Links
References
1. "Journal of Du Roi the Elder," German American Annals, German American Historical Society, Volume IX, Numbers 3 and 4 (1911), pp.210-211,
https://books.google.com/books?id=frEVAAAAYAAJ (last checked June 5, 2018)
2. Thomas Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of America: In a Series of Letters, Volume 2, 1789, pp.322, https://books.google.com/books?id=ymwFAAAAQAAJ (last checked June 10, 2019)
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